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Dwarfing anything id did previously really doesn't say much.
Of course, I think people are confusing "storyline" with "intro" or "setting" to some extent. Half-Life has a story-line. Your objectives change, the situation changes and progresses, you interact with people and things (albeit in a largely linear way).
Whereas with Doom, Quake, and Quake 2, there was less of a storyline.
Doom - First what, you want to survive? So why doesn't your guy go for the escape ship or something? Unclear. Then you decide to go to hell. Or are you made to go to hell? And so on, if there's a story, and there probably is, it's a pretty confused and poorly told one. The game is a classic, the story is not.
Quake - As Danarchist says...
Quake 2 - No real storyline that I noticed. Just like, you're dropped on a planet, something goes wrong, you land on your own, and then what? You try to rejoin your force? Seems that way, but you end up just wandering along until you get to the final boss and kill him. There doesn't seem to be any reason for it, or really for any of the levels. It's just "find the keycard, find the exit" sorta stuff.
I don't deny that it had an interesting background and setting. I didn't see much evidence of a storyline, though.
Half-Life - First you're just a scientist, just doing your job. Then it all goes to hell, you try to escape to the surface, but your route is blocked, so you have to find an alternate way out, then the military arrives, starts killing everybody, forcing you to re-think your escape plan again, and so on, the story progresses until eventually you HAVE to go and deal with the aliens, because no-one else is about to do it, and it's more or less the only way to avoid being killed by one side or the other.
So it does have a storyline, which does actually progress. Unreal does too, though it is less clear, because of the lack of NPCs, and I would say it's more or less on par with Q2 story-wise, in practice.
Doom 3 will have to be a big leap. We know this, id know this, and I think they will make it. It will take some effort, though...

Dark Fox - Dude, way to get out of actually having to back up any of your "points". With the classic "u r still retarded" comment, that was written by a retard in the first place, I mean, grow the fuck up, either want to discuss the issue, debate it, whatever, or you just want to mouth off like a sub-retarded 12 year-old and have no-one contradict you. You want the latter, so just shut the fuck up, eh?
Of course, anyone, like me, who can type fast and uses words longer than one syllable, and actually thinks through his arguments has no life. Yeah, okay, I'm sure that's the way it is. Again I suggest you grow the fuck up. You can get pretty far in life making retarded comments and not backing them up (just look at any number of politicians), but you're still the actual retard.

Oh, and for extra credit, allow me to go through specific concerns:
"Maybe 2 for the engine itself, but what about levels, animations, static models, design, muliplayer asspects, product design, advertising, etc."
Reverse order,
Advertising. Dude, it's DOOM FUCKING THREE! DOOOOOOOOOM! DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM! Everyone in the fucking world played Doom, and Doom 3 will not need some slow-ass build-up advertising campaign like Half-Life. It's such hot property that id are AVOIDING getting the advertising started early, for fear of media burn-out.
Product design. You mean what exactly? I think you have that covered with the other aspects. Perhaps you could clarify?
Multiplayer. I think id can handle itself here. Network code is good enough, no need for the massive rewrites that took up so much time for Q2 and Q3. So not much time required. The gameplay? Trickier, but chances are, even if slapdash, it will be great, if it has all the crazy lighting and physics suggested...
Design. Um, this is different to product design, levels, models and so on exactly how? You seem to be repeating yourself.
Static models - Well, you've seen what I've seen, no? Those models were pretty damned impressive, and the project has apparently barely started. id has also hinted that they have ways of individualizing monsters and so on. I have no doubt they will be of extremely high quality.
Animations - Slightly trickier. id has not got much of record for terribly exciting animations, IMHO, but they do supposedly have help in this area, and I don't think it will take *that* long to get animations of a sufficent level of quality for the release.
Levels - Here comes trouble. This is what I worry about. id's history of SP level design seems to have been downhill all the way. Doom was better than Doom 2 was better than Quake was better than Quake 2 and Quake 3 didn't feature SP levels.
This, IMHO, is the biggest leap id have to make. The leap from mindless blasting with cheating ambushes and overwhelming numbers to subtle and complex gameplay coming from levels which force the player to take more care, count his ammo, and think about his actions.
I don't think they're going to make it, personally.
Instead, I think they will revert somewhat, and cut down on the caution and monster behaviour and build-up horror and the like, and go for more "Come on then! BLAM! You want SOME? BLAM, BLAM! YOU WANT SOME?!"-type gameplay and level design, more shooty and agressive, and alot of people will prefer that. I might not, you might not, but alot of people will.
Of course, alot of this is predicated on assumption. We just don't know that much about Doom 3. Do we even REALLY know how long the ENGINE has been in development? I don't think so. I'm betting since before Q3 was done. Perhaps since before Q3 was started, at least on and off. So maybe id do have enough time to do the content?

Dark Fox - "I'm taking a god damn college course on 3d application structure."
Yes, and I'm taking a DEGREE, not just a course, in programming with special emphasis on graphics, and particularly 3D graphics in interactive software (ie. games). Anyway, so what? That you are taking a course gives you no special insight into this, and in fact, to judge from your statements, you pay relatively little attention to ACTUAL game development, and thus, I would say, I worse qualified than many people here... Do you want some kind of pissing contest? Perhaps if you were taking a course in games development or the like I could see your point. You are not, however...
"Newb"? Going by the posting number are we? Uh-huh? Perhaps you should instead check how long I've been a member of this forum? For the better part of a year, compared to your year and a couple of months. Not exactly a massive difference is it? If I'm a "newb", I guess you must have only just left that catergory yourself? I don't post, by and large because, no insult to the people running the site and the better posters, alot of the posters here can be a little, um, childish...
So I've only posted what, 38 times? If that makes me a "newb", well, there you go. Boo-hoo for me. I'm so sorry for not posting all the time.
Anyway, back to the subject at hand.
You used Unreal as a comparison. It is a poor comparison for the reasons I outlined previously. You have made no attempt to refute my reasoning, or point out the no doubt obvious flaws in it. Perhaps you would be kind enough to do so?
"id is making a huge leap". Yes, it is. Probably as large as the leap from Doom 2 to Quake. id made that leap in what, three years? less? Even then, they had a false start in the form of developing the RPG titled Quake for a while before changing their minds and essentially re-making Doom (Quake the shoot-em up was, of course, never meant to be called that).
So, I ask you, why would it take five years when the same leap took them three before? Just because a DIFFERENT team took 5 five years to make a rather longer leap (the Unreal team included alot of things not in Quake or even Quake 2, as I said). Assuming I'm right about Q2 coming out near or before Unreal (even with it's slippage), we've seen id put out TWO games in the time it took Epic to put out ONE.
WAIT, anyway, I do agree with you on some things. Check out the latter half of my previous post. I worry about content. Content is what you are worrying about too. You are saying the engine will take so long to code that the content will not be up to scratch if Doom 3 is released soon. I too am suggesting the content may not be up to scratch but for slightly different reasons. I believe the content is already being programmed, or at least designed in depth, moreso than Quake or Quake 2, which had plots and content more or less slapped together late in the day. I believe, however, that to create the complex, immersive SP environment that we want for Doom 3, it may take longer to code the content. I believe id will release anyway, and cut content if necessary. I believe their history shows they'd rather release a game on time with a weak single-player mode, than wait and make that exciting.
Look at Quake 1. Single player is pretty poor, but not awful. Much like Doom, it's just walk and kill. Some nice early use of 3D position and scary monsters (remember when you first saw the giant fire-demon boss? It was pretty shocking, neh?), but not much else. Multiplayer made it a classic.
Quake 2 single player, despite being intended to be better than Q1 was far worse. For starters, it was too easy. I walked through it in a weekend despite going out all night every night, on the hardest available setting, and without being Mr Quiksave. It was boring too, and I never replayed it single-player, nor had any desire to. Multiplayer code was damned good, and improved. So it took came to be regarded as a classic, though more through the mods that were released for it than the game itself, I would suggest.
Let's think about the development of Doom from Wolfenstien, too, not as great a leap, perhaps, but still a significant one, and one achieved swiftly and able-ly by the id team.
Anyway, whilst I feel you are right to be concerned about content, I feel it is for the wrong reasons. Doom 3 will come out by June 2003, period. Probably well before that.

Dark Fox - Um, duh, because a true 3D FPS (3D FPRPG, yes, but not FPS) had never really been done before, certainly not one anywhere near as complex and full featured as Unreal. Importantly, network code for multiplayer barely existed either, so that had to be developed too. Remember, of course, that Unreal was started (IIRC), before Quake, yet Quake came out first. Unreal didn't come out until what, near or after Quake 2...? Of course, Unreal had alot more advances that even Quake 2 over the old 2.5D games, and looked far, far better (especially with detail textures, which don't even appear to be in Quake 3, and all sorts of effects that didn't appear in an id game until Q3A, such as coronas).
Not to mention that the game conception was changed several times, and the project experienced various foul-ups and slow-downs, and the team was small(-ish), and the 3D card market experienced dramatic changes during Unreal's development, necessitating further fiddling.
So it's a poor comparison, at best, and frankly, you don't know what the fuck you're talking about.
You also neglect the fact that despite all this time and effort, Unreal, at time of release, was even buggier than your take-out, and that it took a huge number of patches to fix all those problems, and even then, the netcode was still very noticeably inferior to Q2's. (Unreal was infinitely more beautiful visually, and had a more fun single-player game, but that's a whole other story.)
id has, as Lord Flathead correctly points out, never taken that long to make a game, and hopefully never will. Quake took the longest, IIRC, because it had the same problems to contend with as Unreal, except that because they released so rapidly, they dodged the 3D card bullet, and were able to release GLQuake at their leisure.
Doom 3 is already further into development (to judge from the movies etc.) than Unreal was after two years or more. Perhaps id are just more disciplined and focused? Having one of the best programmers in charge can't hurt them either, I suspect.
The only likely hold-up is "content", I would suggest. As id uses a relatively small (though expanding) team, the "slog" of putting together single-player levels, scripting, testing, modifying, and re-testing those levels will be felt more strongly. Which is why I suspect Doom 3 will be less story and more "interactive environment" oriented, which is to say, you will create your own story with your actions in an environment allowing for a greater diversity of actions. With a game like, say, Half-Life, you need a strong story to maintain interest, because all you can really to is walk, shoot, and jump, in a relatively linear manner. Some areas are more interactive and allow for more solutions, but most of Half-Life was pretty linear, and your actions were very limited. The same for most SP FPSes these days.
With an arena-based game, like Quake 3 or UT, the content is far easier to create. Whilst there is the tweaking and so on, and optimisation of all those destined to be heavily used and abused MP levels, and the programming of the bots, I would suggest that this is alot less time-consuming than programming SP level after SP level, especially if you want replayability.
So I'm guessing that id will aim for a late 2002 release, actually get some kind of MP test or the like out by then, and finally release the game in early or middle 2003 (more likely middle, IMHO).

Personally, I'm worried about Quake 4. They seem to be going back to the whole "story-based" Q2 thing, exactly when Doom 3 is also going back to a "story-based" game, instead of Quake 1 and Quake 3's "arena-based" games. There's a danger that they (Raven) will simply have an inferior version of Doom 3 on their hands, I would suggest.
The main thing, I think, would be to forget about Quake 2, which had so-so visual design, a non-existant plot, and general sense of disconnection from character. Plus it was really easy, even on the hardest SP settings (I remember I finished it the weekend I got it, despite being out all night every night).
They should work to differentiate themselves from Doom 3 also. If Doom 3 has something, Quake 4 should not. If Doom 3 stars a bunch of haggard marines in bulky torso armour with shotguns, rocket launchers and machine guns, and so does Quake 4, we're going to get very bored very quickly.
Of course, we don't know much about Doom 3 still (god, I remember when I joined this forum a *while* ago, perhaps a year ago, I think, and I we don't know much more than we did then. Id is doing a superb job keeping a lid on things.), so we don't know exactly what they'll have to avoid, but I would suspect Doom 3 will be very personal and survival-oriented, counting every shell, staying alert, and sorta sneaking around. It will no doubt, be dark most of the time, and weapons will likely be projectile and explosive, not energy.
So maybe Quake 4 could look to a more "war"-type format, which would lend itself nicely to team-based multiplayer as well, with far more futuristic weaponry, brighter levels and colours, and so on. The single player mode could also include team-based sections, or team leadership, or whatever. Of course, the danger here is bumping into Unreal 2 and Unreal War, which also seem to be taking up that territory, and will likely come out first (certainly Unreal 2 will, I would have thought). Better graphics may not be enough to differentiate Quake 4 from them.
The real problem is that id has been making the same game, over and over, almost since Wolf3D, and certainly since Doom 1. This isn't an insult, and they have tried to branch out, but always found themselves coming back to "guy in bulky body armour with shotgun takes on cyber'd-up monsters/demons". Quake probably least fit that mold, and that was only due to the low-tech nature of your opponents. So Quake 2 was essentially a relative of Doom 1, and all this "game inbreeding" has created potential conflicts for the future. I await Quake 4 with interest, but I do worry that it will be either sub-Doom 3 or sub-Unreal 2...

I'll have to take a look at Silent Hill.
Whilst I can't explain *why* some guy sent you that bizarre letter, I can tell you I'm 98% certain that that's Indonesian, *possibly* Malay. I think Indonesian, though.

I have one! (Heh, answering my own question!).
Graffiti, especially written in blood on the wall, is certainly one way to convey info, and a rather cool one, I think...
That couldn't be the only one, of course...
Sounds are another, screams in the distance, a wall that make an odd noise when shot, and the like. More specific ideas on this?

I was re-reading the VoodooExtreme interview with Carmack on Doom 3, and something he said struck me as having not been discussed much.
He said that he wanted some way to get information to the player, but that he implied that he wanted it to be original, not something too "done", as he suggested NPCs and computers were.
So that leaves what? Well, just down the page we have the suggestion of a "log" in Doom 3, that could be one way, it is a little done, but with "hand-sketched" monsters, and other personal touches, as one person suggested, it could be very good. You could convey atmosphere and personality as well as the odd hint/idea about what to do.
If four or five different characters were used, they could have different logs, and it would be easy enough to vary the log based on what had happened.
Still, this is all a bit complex, and not necessarily what Carmack had in mind.
So, how would you go about giving information to the player, given that Carmack has already suggested that NPCs (Non-Player Characters) and computers are a tad passe?
Any ideas, guesses, suggestions?

Fuck, that would be scary. I vote for that one! id could do it if they tried, there are ways, and besides, you don't need to be totally realistic. Sound-effects and blood-covered jaws/teeth and the whole "eating" animation will do 90% of the work. Very little actual eating will need to be shown.
Eating is REAL scary though, I mean, see "Dawn of the Dead", the uncut verion. Euuuughh! There's some serious horrific eatage in that.

Well, on 1) I STRONGLY DISAGREE. Not everyone loves Nictophobia.
It sounds right, it's seductive, but I don't think it's the way to go. You will just make people go to sleep if it's ALL dark. You need reasonably well-lit areas. Levels all lit by coloured lighting (like red) are likely to drive people insane (find one of the DM levels with all-red lighting out there, there's got to be one. Play around on it for half an hour. Your head will REALLY hurt!).
Doom 3 will hopefully be about fear and atmosphere. That doesn't mean it has to be a psychological experiment in pain.
People don't like pain. They won't play a game that causes them pain. This is fact. It's Pavlovian, baby.
Doom didn't do this. Go play it again! 90% of the time it's bright, clear-ish, skies. Only in some parts of hell is it dark, and red.
It's interesting that Deadnail brings up Serious Sam 2. That features Doom-like gameplay, and huge and pretty and well-lit open areas, mainly outdoors. It's super-fun and easy to play because of it.
This feeds into 2) Claustrophobia - Don't do it! It's not only a cliche, but un-Doom-y! Doom has lots of open areas, which, by the standards of the time, are VERY large.
Claustrophobia should be used SPARINGLY, not ALL THE DAMN TIME (sorry, I'm getting all shouty, please take no offence, this isn't intended as a flame, I'm just passionate about this). Use it to create atmosphere, like in Aliens, where they have to crawl through the tunnels whilst pursued, not all the time, that's just depressing.
3) I'd prefer no music, but this is Doom. Personally I think NIN and Trent suck gigantic industrial ass, and I hope he ends up not doing the music. If there is music, it should be subtle, and original, not just mind-shatteringly boring industrial (which Trent specialises in). Use some instruments for god's sake! Proper orchestration is MUCH scarier than some sampled car-crusher or chainsaw being repeated at 30Hz.
Sometimes the music should just *stop*, because music defuses fear, unless it's building it, and it can't do that 24-7... Sometimes you should just be listening, feeling that "too quiet" feeling...
4) Sound effects - Here, I totally agree without. Thief scared the wits out of me. Definately the model to follow here.
5) Monster placement - Mostly agree, though it needs to be done realistically, and not cheatily (just how long can an imp stand on a 1ft wide ledge for? How did it get up there in the first place? Does have it a ladder?! Have the other monsters taken the ladder away?! :) Heh, you get the point), and remember, unless they randomize it somehow, or monsters move around, it'll only scare once or twice. Scares a waaaay less great when you're expecting something.
I like the idea of the hunter level, though it would be difficult to execute, especially considering it has to work in co-op (not impossible, and it would be very scary to have your friends picked off, one by one, and even with re-spawn they'd have to make their way to the exit point, across the level, all alone. Anyone who's played EverQuest and been bound in a dangerous place knows how scary that can be...
On Serious Sam Test 2 - Well, I was very impressed after I download that "Newscripts.zip", and used the 128MB and Geforce S3TC fixes (and then upgraded everything to 32-bit), that game is huge amounts of crazy fun. Reminded me of Doom, but really, it's "pulse-pounding", but not very scary. Except those bastard kamikazes, when I hear that screaming, I really get nervous...

Looks like a fairly typical controller to me.
The problem with gamepads is: the're counter-intuitive.
The Mouselook, WASD, Space jump, C crouch, Shift run, and so on setup did not appear, full-grown "from the head of Zeus". It evolved.
In Doom days most of us were using the keyboard (only), with the Arrow Keys for movement, Space for use, Ctrl for fire, and so on, and when I first played games with a mouse, it was a total headfuck (like Quake), but I got over that quickly, and with the rest of the people I knew, transitioned from a Arrow Keys and Mouse set-up to the more comfortable and sane WASD setup, which first appeared in game as standard (IIRC) in HalfLife, so is fairly recent.
Anyway, my point is, it evolved because it's effecient, it's quick and easy, you don't have to think, and even new players get it very quickly indeed (IMX).
Joypads are always screwy for FPSes. They never have enough buttons, and the buttons are never positioned right. They require MASSIVE manual dexterity to use with any degree of skill (it's like being able rub your stomach and pat your read at the same time, on x10), and good memory too, and I speak as someone who's been playing FPSes on a pad since Turok (which just about managed it, though jumps were a nightmare), and will NEVER be as easy to use as a mouse and keyboard, not so much for the analog sticks as for the oddly positioned keys, often with complex, counter-intuitive fuctions.
Now, your idea to make one of the sticks into a trackball is a good one. Have you seen a proper DC pad? (Later: Duh, you're talking about DC Q3!) They have bulged out sticks which are very like a kind of "stick-ball" (hah!), a sort of trackball that springs back into place. That's alot better for pointing than the typical PS/PS2 ones (less good for driving, though).
Your idea is better still. It's nothing short of brilliant in fact. Get a patent for this man! No sarcasm! Seriously, it's in exactly the right place for a small trackball, and wouldn't screw up my control of, say, Grand Turismo 3000, which requires a small, centered stick. It would speed up buying parts for the cars too!
Really, I can't understand why someone hasn't done this before.
Damn, really, it's a stroke of genius.
(I sound so sarcastic, I'm not, but I can think of so many games this would be bloody useful on. My personal "nightmarish console FPS" was MDK2 on the DC. Move with the buttons, aim with the DC-ball, jump on the right trigger, fire on the left, digital pad to change weapons, and so on, and my brain damned near exploded).
Get someone to make it!

That would be just insanely scary. Even more so if you *very occasionally* got a glimpse of something scuttling back into the shadows after you came back into a room to find this sort of thing.
It shouldn't be overused, shouldn't happen every time, but could be very creepy indeed. The feeling that your back is NOT guarded is obviously VERY frightening to most humans.
Kudos.

Interesting stuff. I particularly like your ideas for other characters. That would work very well in the co-op mode, I feel, if people were better at different things, though they could all be equal if id wanted to make their lives simple.
You like some characterisation, I see, but I'd tend to suggest some of Duke's comments were more on the "Vote for X"-style side of extreme characterisation (that and I just hated the guy). Serious Sam's characters are a little lower-toned, less "in-your-face" (anyone remember "Poochy", the new Itchy and Scratchy character in the Simpsons? He always reminded me of Duke totally), but still have decent comments, like "I smell an ambush", and so on, though the "Yaaaaahoooo" on picking up the RL is a bit much, but, hey, whatever.
This potential problem is largely negated by having a few different characters though, as it's really unlikely they'll ALL be annoying (possible, but unlikely) to any given person (and it's pretty certain everyone will be irritated by at least one of them).
The first level thing is a very cool idea. For co-op you could all do your levels seperately and then meet up, or just all skip the first level and meet up at the first "all players" level point. Cool.
I'd agree with you and Warren Spector on stats. You don't need precise numbers (generally), just areas of strength and weakness, and comparisons. There are very few games without this sort of thing now, and even Q3A nearly had it, so I'd be suprised to see it entirely absent from Doom 3.

Cipher, cool...
On customization - Ah, but we WILL see it. Not when we play Deathmatch, which will likely be after playing for a while, but when we play co-op! Which for me will likely be ASAP, as I love co-op and have a LAN and friends who like co-op games too.
Co-op broadband over the internet is a viable option too, so long as you use some kind of voice hook-up (not necessarily built into the game, of course).
I'd love to see slightly different hands too.
Still, your point is well taken, I agree that Doom is about Fear, and whatever draws you in is good. That would imply a largely silent character, I should note, as the human voice, especially warcries etc. tend to counteract fear. That's what warcries are for, historically, to embolden the warrior as much as scare his enemies.
Of course, jumping at shadows, and hearing your warcry echo off the walls of seemingly empty rooms would be cool too, and might cause some fear (and EAX should be able to handle that without any difficulty).